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Geography Blue Box Seminar

Friday, Oct. 7, 3-4 p.m.

SN-2025

Wish you were here: Confessions of a carto-deltiologist

Presenter: Keith Storey

While usually viewed as a trivial object, the postcard has been an important communications medium for the past 125 years. It was both a product and a producer of the social, economic and cultural changes that occurred at the end of the 19th and the first part of the 20thC and went hand in hand with the rise of a new consumer culture, a more affluent society, and a new middle class. All these developments coalesced in a picture-postcard “craze” in the first 20 years of the 20th C. Though this ended with the first World War, the postcard didn’t die, instead, numbers of picture cards mailed increased and it is only in the last twenty years that the number of postcards sent has declined.

 

Postcard imagery has been of all types. The focus here is on map postcards and what we might learn from them about activities, attitudes and change. The postcard, simple as it appears to be, is a far more complex and “entangled” object than we give it credit for and its influence on society is worth more attention than it has so far been given.

Presented by Evan Edinger

Event Listing 2022-10-07 15:00:00 2022-10-07 16:00:00 America/St_Johns Geography Blue Box Seminar Wish you were here: Confessions of a carto-deltiologist Presenter: Keith Storey While usually viewed as a trivial object, the postcard has been an important communications medium for the past 125 years. It was both a product and a producer of the social, economic and cultural changes that occurred at the end of the 19th and the first part of the 20thC and went hand in hand with the rise of a new consumer culture, a more affluent society, and a new middle class. All these developments coalesced in a picture-postcard “craze” in the first 20 years of the 20th C. Though this ended with the first World War, the postcard didn’t die, instead, numbers of picture cards mailed increased and it is only in the last twenty years that the number of postcards sent has declined.   Postcard imagery has been of all types. The focus here is on map postcards and what we might learn from them about activities, attitudes and change. The postcard, simple as it appears to be, is a far more complex and “entangled” object than we give it credit for and its influence on society is worth more attention than it has so far been given. SN-2025 Evan Edinger